Video Games DO kill…
That’s it, its official. Video games DO kill.
Well, video games in stupidly large doses kill… but then, anything in stupidly large doses is unlikely to be good for you, and sadly that includes Kiera Knightley and 20 litre bottle of chocolate sauce.
It seems that after the death of yet another Korean gamer earlier this month, Korean medical experts thought they’d better have a look at why gamers were dropping dead at their monitors. Frankly, what they’ve come up with is not particularly shocking but perhaps more of a comment on how addictive games and competitiveness can combine to put your body in a dangerously unhealthy place.
According to Digital Chosunilbo, a Korean Online newspaper, on December 8th a 38 year old Korean man died suddenly after 20 straight days of gaming. His death follows that of a high school student in November who collapsed after a 9 hour session. But these deaths appear limited to Korea and so far there have been no reports of gamers keeling over elsewhere in the world.
According to Dr. Song Hyeong-gon of Samsung Seoul Hospital’s Emergency Department gamers don’t realise how exhausted or stressed they are, especially if they haven’t slept for a long time. He went on to say:
“Because they are stressed by the obsession with winning the game, they consume a considerable amount of energy. In such a physically exhausted condition, exposure to bright colors or stimulating images on the screen is likely to irritate the cerebral cortex and can cause sudden death.”
One factor that helps to make gaming a possibly unhealthy past-time in Korea is the dark and dingy internet cafes that many gamers frequent. The 38 year-old was there for 20 days in a dark, smoky environment… that’s 480 hours… he must’ve had some sleep in that time but his reported diet of instant noodles for that length of time very probably didn’t help.
You have to wonder at what drives a person to play games continuously for such a length of time. Surely the owner of the internet café that man was practically living in should shoulder some responsibility? But then, if he is to be blamed at least in part for the death, then shouldn’t the game’s developers take some blame too? If they hadn’t made the game so addictive to the dead man, perhaps he wouldn’t have felt compelled to play for so long. Or maybe the man just had such a fiercely competitive streak he wouldn’t stop until he was top of the heap?
Whatever the answer, the lesson for gamers is quite clear. Gaming, just like anything else, isn’t healthy in large doses and we should all exercise a certain amount of common sense when playing. Though flat-screens have gone someway to alleviating eye-strain, this only allows for longer playing times. All gamers should be aware of how long they’ve been playing and take regularly breaks away from the screen during gaming sessions… it’s common sense really.
